...passing through the web came across a signed copy of his earliest published work, "Color" http://www.rrauction.com/bidtracker_detail.cfm?IN=695, Countee Cullen was a fascinating figure of Harlem Renaissance. He admitted to himself the terrible anachronism of his life. He was naturally gifted in poetry and oratory, but black, with possible ties to homosexuality, and the backdrop the 1930s. Deeply reticent of Wordsworth and Blake, much of his temperament is classical in style. Poems such like "A Brown Girl Dead" are striking modernist themes http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-brown-girl-dead/, but the framing of the poem is classical. From "Thoughts in a Zoo":
"That lion with his lordly, untamed heart
Has in some man his human counterpart,
Some lofty soul in dreams and visions wrapped,
But in the stifling flesh securely trapped."
The conflicts for such a soul in the epitome of turmoil had to have been immense.
A memorial collection is available for visiting at http://www.auctr.edu/rwwl/Home/CounteeCullen/tabid/320/Default.aspx.
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